


My Dark Side

by blainedarling



Series: we could have been [3]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 13:52:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blainedarling/pseuds/blainedarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Yadda yadda, from the song, as usual. Warnings! alcoholism and violence. Also, the French might be wrong because I've never properly learned the imperative so I had to give myself a quick Google-aided lesson, which is always risky. And this is the only one in the collection with a happy ending, so, enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote>





	My Dark Side

**Author's Note:**

> Yadda yadda, from the song, as usual. Warnings! alcoholism and violence. Also, the French might be wrong because I've never properly learned the imperative so I had to give myself a quick Google-aided lesson, which is always risky. And this is the only one in the collection with a happy ending, so, enjoy!

_There's a place that I know  
It's not pretty there and few have ever gone  
If I show it to you now  
Will it make you run away?_

It had started years ago, back when he’d lived in Paris as a teenager. Sebastian’s parents had been on the verge of what became a very messy divorce and he’d spend his evenings listening to the sounds of them shrieking ruthlessly at one another, often followed by the ring of his father’s hand slapping across his mother’s face. 

In the morning, they would act as if nothing had happened. Darling was tacked on the end to every other sentence, but their smiles were forced, their eyes cold. Should his father even brush past his mother as he walked from the breakfast table, she would flinch, her eyes shutting momentarily before she slipped her mask into place. 

Sebastian soon found that the fights preoccupied them enough to not notice should he silently slip out of the house late at night. It almost disappointed him that he didn’t have to attempt an elaborate sneaking out from his bedroom window; even the click of the front door closing not enough to deter his parents from screaming one another hoarse. 

The first couple of nights, Sebastian found himself simply wandering through the brightly lit streets of Paris, sneering at the tourists as they stumbled around, blindly following their out of date, ridiculously large maps and kicking his feet along the road. 

One Saturday, he bumped into a girl he knew by sight alone - she went to the same school as him, although they’d never spoken and he would only have been able to guess at her name.   
“Sebastian!” she cried, grabbing at his arm and tugging him towards the open door she was standing outside of, flicking the butt of her cigarette to the ground. _“Viens à l’intérieur! Viens avec nous!”_ (“Come inside! Join us!”)

Sebastian was hesitant at first - he knew nothing about the girl, let alone whose house it was she was trying to drag him into. He paused, thinking it over for a moment. He had barely any friends in the city, his parents rarely even noticed his existence anymore and his older sister had left for college at the start of that year.   
_“Guide le chemin.”_ (“Lead the way.”)

Those were the people who encouraged Sebastian to live, for the first time, as if every day were their last. They drank excessively, smoked anything they could get their hands on until they could barely make out on another’s face through the haze and sex was more commonplace than bottled water. 

Sebastian learned a lot from them, but never did he feel pressured to do anything he didn’t want to. He’d tried smoking a few times but found it wasn’t for him; something the group respected and understood. That he was gay wasn’t something that bothered them either, exemplified in the two gorgeous boys they found for him, that he lost his virginity to a snowy December night; the taller of the two biting down on his neck as he fucked into his ass slowly, the shorter’s eyes fixed on Sebastian’s as he sank down over his cock. 

Drinking, however, was what Sebastian enjoyed the most. He would spend long nights creating concoctions with whatever alcohol he could find, more often than not passing out on the cool wooden floor of the house of the girl he’d met that first night after he’d drunk his finished creation.

Alcohol remained his escape all throughout high school and well into his college years. When he and Blaine started dating, he told him he didn’t drink at all. The truth was, he didn’t drink in front of other people. A glass of wine over dinner, a cocktail at bar, it wasn’t enough to satisfy the ache that went through him. Instead he would refine himself to when he was alone, when he needed it, and then he would drink and drink until the the wall of his apartment was a blur before him and his legs could no longer keep him upright. 

The first time Blaine discovered his secret was a rainy day in late February. Sebastian had come home from yet another horrible day at work: deadlines he kept missing, his temporary boss (Miranda was on maternity leave) a psychotic maniac and he hadn’t even had the time to have a decent meal in weeks. 

Blaine had a spare key to Sebastian’s apartment and when his boyfriend hadn’t responded to his knocks for ten minutes, although he could see the light streaming under the door, he decided it would be necessary for him to use it. 

He found Sebastian laying half off the couch in his living room, shivering despite the warmth of his apartment, empty bottles scattered around him, his eyes half closed.   
“Whatcha doing here?” Sebastian slurred, cracking one eye open enough to register Blaine’s presence before settling his head back against the couch, smacking his dry lips together.

Blaine could do nothing but open and close his mouth a few times, before finally shaking himself out of it, walking swiftly to the kitchen to fill up a glass with water. He brought it back to his boyfriend, leaning down next to him and coaxing him upright enough to help him bring it to his lips.  
“No, no!” Sebastian protested, pushing the glass away, sending it crashing to the floor, water seeping out over the rug.

Blaine sighed, returning to the kitchen for a fresh glass and sitting down next to Sebastian that time. He put the glass safely down on the table for the time being, turning to the other man and pulling him up to sit fully on the couch, before pushing the hair back from his forehead. “I don’t understand, Bas,” he murmured finally, still carding his fingers through his hair.  
Sebastian flopped down onto Blaine’s lap, rolling over so he could look up at him. “I lied,” he stage-whispered, before bursting into hysterical giggles. “I do drink! All the time! Lots of it!”

“I can see that,” Blaine replied dryly, taking Sebastian’s hands firmly in his own to stop him flailing around before he ended up knocking himself out. “Why?”  
Sebastian shrugged, yawning as he curled himself towards Blaine’s stomach. “I’ll tell you about it some time,” he mumbled, promptly passing out, one hand fisted in Blaine’s shirt.

Blaine managed to extract himself from his boyfriend’s grasp without waking him, tucking him up more comfortably on the couch and tidying up the apartment before making use of Sebastian’s bed. He slept in fits, waking up every other hour to check that yes, Sebastian was still on the couch and yes, he was still breathing. 

When Sebastian awoke the next morning, there was a cup of coffee and several glasses of water lined up on the table waiting for him, Blaine kneeling at his side. He knew from the stale taste in his mouth and the pounding in the back of his head that he’d been drinking the night before and could just remember talking with Blaine, even though he couldn’t recall what had been said. 

“You’re still here,” he whispered, frowning a little as he pulled himself up to a sitting position, drawing his knees up to his chest.  
Blaine nodded, moving to his side and wrapping an arm around his waist tightly. “Of course I am,” he murmured, leaning forward to brush his nose with his own. “I’m not going anywhere.”

_Or will you stay  
Even if it hurts  
Even if I try to push you out  
Will you return?_

Blaine had spent his entire life trying to live up his father’s expectations of him. His brother was a (self-proclaimed) success out in Los Angeles and this left the younger Anderson with the future of the family business on his shoulders. From a young age, before he even quite knew what he was talking about, Blaine had been very vocal about not wanting to do “whatever boring thing daddy does, I hate that suit” but his father had never wavered on it.

It was an evening in late fall and Blaine had been summoned by his parents to sit down and talk about college choices for the next year. Blaine, jaw set and mind firmly made up, spread out a selection of brochures for dance schools across the table. After endless pleading, his parents had allowed him to take dance lessons since he was a young child, in everything from ballet to jazz to tap. They had assumed it was something he would grow out of.

“Blaine, these are not suitable schools for you,” his father sneered, pushing the stack of brochures to the floor with a thump and laying down four in their place. Yale. Harvard. Princeton. Columbia. “If it were up to me,” his father continued. “You wouldn’t even consider Columbia - you know how I feel about New York - but I have decided to give you the choice.”

Blaine gaped for a moment, looking between his parents: his mother, sitting silent, gaze cast downwards; his father stern yet disinterested.   
“This is what you call giving me a choice?” Blaine asked in disbelief, picking up the nearest brochure and tearing it straight down the middle. 

“When are you going to grow up and stop acting like such a child?” his father hissed, slamming his hand down onto the wooden table.   
“Maybe when you two stop treating me like one,” Blaine screamed, standing up so violently that his chair flew over.

He turned around, ignoring his father completely, storming from the house. He paused in the hallway, picking up a foul and unnecessarily expensive vase that his father had bought two years ago. Glancing over his shoulder to see that his father was indeed following him, he threw it forcefully towards the wall where it smashed into a hundred thousand tiny little pieces.   
“It looks a lot nicer now,” Blaine commented with a grin before he stomped out of the house.

Sometimes, Blaine wondered if something had gone wrong when he was a child. Perhaps he’d been exposed to some dangerous chemical, like the Hulk, or his mother had been an alcoholic while she’d been pregnant. He generally thought that the first possibility seemed more plausible than the second. 

Regardless of why it was so, it was as if there was a fuse inside of him. Typically, Blaine was polite, respectful, enthusiastic and strong-willed. But, should something tip him over the edge, ignite that fuse until he was burning from the inside out, he was like an entirely different person. Loud, destructive and more than a little violent - fortunately, his violence was usually reserved solely to expensive ornaments and other household items, rather than people.

Three months after Blaine found out about Sebastian’s drinking problem, his own secret was revealed. He’d blown yet another audition, his trust fund running dangerously dry and with his part-time job paying the absolute minimum, he barely had enough money to keep the water going, let alone to eat. 

For the most part, he’d learned by then to take out his anger on a punching bag; no mess or law suits involved. However, after spotting him at the gym a few weeks in a row, a slightly older man had approached him and asked if he wanted to join an underground fight club. There was something so much more satisfying about punching a man square in the jaw than the target on a rubber bag swinging from a ceiling.

The club was just a few blocks away from Sebastian’s office and as he walked home that day, he couldn’t help but catch a name being passed around by a group of men that were making their way to the back door of a building.  
“Blaine’s apparently in a foul mood tonight.”  
“Packs a hell of a punch for a little guy.”  
“I can see why he’d make a good dancer, he’s so nimble.”

Sebastian’s curiosity was peaked and he carefully followed a small distance behind the group, ducking through the door and into the shadows. His jaw dropped open as he watched Blaine and a man nearly twice his size in the middle of the crowded room. The man didn’t stand a chance, Blaine throwing punches left, right and center, ducking smoothly out of the way every time he tried to retaliate. 

He had to admit that Blaine looked hot like that, muscles in his arms flexing, sweat pooling in his collarbone, curls breaking free. But, that wasn’t enough to mask how it scared him. There was a dark violence he could see in Blaine’s eyes, even from that distance. The sound of the last hit as the other man went down had Sebastian reeling back to his teen days, to the sound of his mother’s choking cries. 

Blaine didn’t notice him until he was about to leave, Sebastian stepping out of the shadows and taking a firm grip on his arm.  
“Sebastian,” he breathed, his face panicked as he struggled to find the right words.  
“What is this?” Sebastian snapped, looking around the emptying underground space in disgust. “Is this how you get your kicks? By beating the shit out of innocent guys?”

“They come here voluntarily,” Blaine hissed, wrenching his arm free. “It’s not my fault they suck.”  
An involuntary smile twitched at the corner of Sebastian’s mouth as he folded his arms across his chest. 

Blaine sighed, rubbing his face in exhaustion. “Let me explain over dinner?” he asked, offering his hand, palm face up, to Sebastian.  
Sebastian hesitated only a moment before accepting it, tucking the shorter man close to his side. 

_And remind me who I really am  
Please remind me who I really am_

There were always going to be bad days. Stressful days, frustrating days. Days that made Sebastian want to drink and Blaine want to hit someone. But, that was exactly why they had each other.

Blaine had whizzed through the audition process for the company of a dance-based musical that was starting off-Broadway in a few weeks time. Sebastian had got promoted and asked Blaine to move in. 

Sebastian and Blaine balanced one another out. Some days, they would both come crashing in to their apartment, shaking and desperate for their own kinds of release, but neither one would let the other fall. 

Instead, they would spend the evening laying on the smooth wooden floor, hands connected, matching their breathing to one another and exchanging few words until it passed. They were each other’s anchor, pulling the other to calmer shores.

_Everybody's got a dark side  
Do you love me?  
Can you love mine?_

Blaine twisted his ankle on a Tuesday, the week before the show opened. He limped home, shaking and shivering, his hands balling into fists at his sides. He threw open the door to find Sebastian sitting at the dining room table, a half empty bottle of whisky in front of him. 

“Oh, did your boss yell at you again?” Blaine sneered, tossing his bag to the floor with a thump as he walked over to the table.  
Sebastian was silent, simply taking another long drink from the bottle before putting it down again.  
“Answer me,” Blaine yelled, picking up the bottle and throwing it against the wall, the alcohol seeping into the wallpaper.

Sebastian looked up, his face calm and composed. “My father died.”

_Nobody's a picture perfect  
But we're worth it  
You know that we're worth it  
Will you love me?  
Even with my dark side?_

“Sebastian,” Blaine whispered, dropping down to his knees next to his boyfriend’s chair, resting his head against his thigh. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His shoulders were shaking as he wept, Sebastian still sitting perfectly still.

Finally, Sebastian moved his hand to card through Blaine’s curls gently, letting out a shaky breath. “I’m going to drink some water. You’re going to clean that up. And then we’re going to lay together.”  
Blaine looked up, his eyes wide and warm as he nodded. His Blaine was back. 

_Like a diamond  
From black dust  
It's hard to know  
What can become  
If you give up  
So don't give up on me  
Please remind me who I really am_

The kitchen was a mess - shatters of glass and crockery spread across the floor, a knife sticking precariously out of the wood of the counter.   
“I have to leave,” Blaine whispered once again, his hands shaking as he tried for the fifth time to put his shoe on.  
“No, you don’t,” Sebastian murmured, watching him carefully, yet standing a few feet away, just in case.

“I could have..” Blaine trailed off, gesturing towards the kitchen. “It’s for the best. I need to stay away from you.”  
“No, you need to stay right here, with me. I need you, Blaine Anderson,” Sebastian growled, storming across to him and cupping his face in his hands to force him to look up at him.   
“I can’t ever hurt you,” Blaine breathed, leaning his face into the warmth of Sebastian’s palm.  
“You won’t,” Sebastian reassured him, thumb swiping over Blaine’s damp cheeks. “I trust you.”

_Don't run away  
Don't run away  
Just tell me that you will stay  
Promise me you will stay  
Don't run away  
Don't run away  
Just promise me you will stay  
Promise me you will stay_

“I’m no good for you,” Sebastian whimpered, sitting curled up next to the door, his whole body twitching and convulsing.  
“You’re my everything, Bas, you can’t leave,” Blaine murmured softly, moving to sit next to him and pull him into his arms. “Don’t run away from me. Not now, not ever.”  
“I’m disgusting,” Sebastian sobbed, trying to wrench his hands free from where Blaine had them firmly in his grasp. On more than one occasion, he had tried to make himself sick to get the alcohol out of his system faster. From experience, Blaine had learned it really didn’t help much.

“Hey, look at me,” Blaine coaxed, turning to sit on his knees and encouraging Sebastian to do the same.   
They sat facing one another, hands linked between them.  
“I want you to make me a promise that you’ll stay.”  
Sebastian nodded slowly, silent tears streaming down his cheeks. “Only if you promise too,” he hiccoughed.

Blaine smiled softly, breaking the join with their hands to curl their pinky fingers together.   
“I pinky promise that I will always stay with you,” they murmured in unison, before falling forward, foreheads pressed together.   
“I love you,” Blaine whispered, brushing his lips against Sebastian’s softly.  
Sebastian nudged his nose against Blaine’s, a small smile on his lips. “I love you too.”

Exactly a year later, after only two more drinking incidents and three fits of anger, Blaine Anderson and Sebastian Smythe were married in a small ceremony in New York, surrounded by their closest friends.


End file.
